The Payoff

Here’s how it is. You get up early when all your mates are in bed. You can’t go to the pub because you need to prune your hedges. You spend your winters out in the cold and your rainy days out in the rain. You dig and you plant and you weed and you water. You rake and you hoe and you deadhead and harvest. You battle with slugs and aphids and birds. You haul on your wellies and gillets and gloves. You spend the day in the rain again. You work and you toil and you baby your soil. You bruise and you bleed and you sting and you ache.

You leave work early to tend to the plot. You haven’t had clean fingernails in a month. You’ve ruined all your clothes and your shoes and your hair. You sweat and you freeze and you itch and you sneeze. You sow and you pick and you weed and you sow and you pick and you weed and you sow. You water, you water, you water again.

You can’t sit at home without feeling guilty, you can’t buy fruit in a shop anymore. You can’t  go away for more than a week. You can’t have a hangover because there’s work to be done. You can’t plan a picnic if the weather is good. You can’t wear skirts because your legs are all bruised. You paint your nails and they’re ruined in an hour. You’ll never have an even tan.

You annoy all your mates with talk about plants. You can’t go anywhere without buying seeds. You notice flowers in everyone’s gardens. You take photos of spiders and worms. You learn basic latin against your own will.

You panic when it’s windy in case the plants suffer. You panic when it’s sunny in case there’s a drought. You panic at the sight of frost. You panic when it rains too hard. You meltdown when there’s snow in March, you rain-dance when there’s drizzle in May.

You become “that girl who grows her own food, let’s ask her lots of questions about pruning roses”. You have to pretend you know what you’re doing. You spend more time with plants than with people.

You dig and you weed and you thin out and you sow and you water and you rake and you prune and you grow……..and you’re exhausted all the time.

Then something happens in the midst of it all.

You bring home a batch of fresh food from the garden, you cook some stewed rhubarb with fresh chocolate mint. You have a cup of lemon balm tea. You know you’re the luckiest woman in the world!